telescope

The clear summer skies are upon us it seems, so my nephew and I setup for some viewing and photography last night. For more of a how-to-tutorial I should at some point talk equipment and setup but I’ll save that for another day. The skies were clear last night but the atmospheric conditions were not the best for planetary astrophotography, so we stuck with “night shots” and the Milky Way.

Obviously being a photographer myself for almost 20 years now I am more than a little excited about one of my nearby relatives taking an interest in photography. I know he is just getting starting in his understanding of telescopes, cameras, and astronomy so I can’t wait to see what’s next. He has already started talking about building his own telescope here on the property so there may be photos of that down the road. For now, please check out the video shot by Lonely Leap Films. They did such a fantastic job (and for you tech junkies out there, they shot this whole thing with 2 Canon 5D Mark II’s, including the audio).

If you have a chance to head over to his blog, his updates include everything from astronomy to techniques used in photography to just life in the South. Even after shooting as long as I have he inspires me to want to get out there and shoot the night sky again and again.

Yesterday about 5pm, the Venus Transit across the Sun began. There were so many articles and photos posted from yesterday’s transit, but I think this from National Geographic summed it up the best.

Transits happen when a planet crosses between Earth and the sun. Only Mercury and Venus, which are closer to the sun than our planet, can undergo this unusual alignment.

With its relatively tight orbit, Mercury circles the sun fast enough that we see the innermost planet transit every 13 to 14 years. But transits of Venus are exceedingly rare, due to that world’s tilted orbit: After the 2012 Venus transit, we won’t see another until 2117.

From our vantage point, we were able to see the transit here and there as the cloud cover was typical for a hot afternoon in the south. Clouds came and went, some stayed around for a long time. The shot above is what the transit looked like as the clouds were crossing over the sun. My nephew Jacob has several other shots on his blog post here as well.

All in all it was a fascinating display of the planets, something that was clearly visible with nothing other than some solar eclipse glasses (the 3-D looking glasses). Glad we took time to see it, especially since it won’t be seen again in my lifetime, so the shot above, is literally, a once in a lifetime shot.